


Three Little Words

by nyxocity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, F/M, Twisted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 10:41:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13052361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyxocity/pseuds/nyxocity
Summary: Years ago John Winchester had to kill Bill Harvelle as a mercy. Now, both his sons dead, John finds Bill's daughter Jo at a bar, asking for his help. "You owe me," is all she says. ((Sam and Dean appear in flashbacks))





	Three Little Words

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those ones that wouldn't leave me alone. NOT for the faint of heart.

_California: Devil's Gate Reservoir, 1995_  
  
John kneels behind the crates inside the cavernous darkness of the abandoned warehouse, wetness seeping through the knees of his jeans, dirty liquid so black it spreads like ink stains. Sunlight spills through a rusted gash torn in the metal roof, golden spotlight that spans wide illuminating cracked concrete. It’s within this narrow stretch of light that they’ll make their stand.  
  
A slithering sound in the distance, and Bill’s eyes move to catch his, barely seen in the darkness where they kneel. John nods once, and Bill moves, moving carefully for the sunlight.  
  
John turns, raising his eyes above the crate, gun gripped tight in his hands as he pushes up from his feet, bringing up his gun as—  
  
The creature leaps from the darkness as Bill’s skin touches the light, and John sees it, split second forever frozen into memory. It flies at Bill, too fast for John to move, a horribly disfigured mass of fur, razor-sharp fangs and claws, slitted eyes spilling crimson light. Wet rending, ripping tear of flesh, and Bill screams, John pulling the trigger, closing one of those crimson eyes forever.  
  
Bill is laid out on the concrete, guts spilling from him in coiled loops, pool of blood rushing out in rivers of red. John can see the terrible pain in him, etched into the lines of his face.  
  
“Please.” Bloodless lips and useless arms wrapped around his middle. “I have to see Ellen and Jo… before…”  
  
He won’t last that long and they both know it.  
  
John raises the gun and fires.  
  
  
*  
  
When he breaks the news to Ellen, the sun is too bright in the sky, casting the world in a dream-like haze.  
  
She’s too grief-stricken, eyes closing against a flood of tears, to go for her gun and shoot him like he half-expected her to.  
  
In the distance, he can see Jo walking up the road, blonde hair pulled up in pigtails, her jeans torn and frayed, knees ripped out.   
  
She doesn’t know yet. Best he’s gone before she does.  
  
He tells Ellen how sorry he is one last time before he gets into his truck and drives away, Bill’s screams still echoing inside his head.  
  
  
-  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_Somewhere in Arizona, 2006_  
  
  
When John finally sees her again, it’s in the dim, back room of a dirty bar in Arizona, smell of smoke and the stink of alcohol wafting up from the naked pine-wood floor.  
  
“Jo.”  
  
Gone are the childish pigtails and jeans ripped at the knees. She’s gotten taller, still long and coltish somehow with all her curves, graceful arch to her neck and long mane of blond hair. Her eyes are the only thing exactly the same, still steady and cautious, nearly black in the darkness.  
  
He hadn’t expected her to grow up to be a hunter, too. She’s lean and hard, carved like a statue, skin a pale shade that tells of too many nights spent hunting.   
  
She doesn’t speak for a moment, just looking at him, and he wonders if she’ll take her vengeance here, in this seedy dive of a room, leave him bleeding out onto stained wood.  
  
“The thing that mauled my dad,” she says. “I found it. I can’t track it alone.”  
  
“You want  _me_  to help you?” Disbelief courses through him.  
  
“You owe me,” is all she says.  
  
  
*  
  
Later, in the motel room next to hers, he’s had enough to drink to be thinking words like ‘redemption’.   
  
He knows better. There’s no redemption for all the things he’s done.  
  
She slips inside the room like a wraith and kneels before him, worn, callused hand pulling the bottle from his grip. She tilts it up against her mouth, throat working as she drinks, and sets it aside on the nightstand. Her mouth is warm, redolent with the taste of bourbon, and it feels like sin. Half his age, young and beautiful woman all grown up, and she’s got no reason or right to be kissing him like this.  
  
He tries to push her away, but she eases him back against the bed, will and strength stripped away by alcohol, her hands gentle, easy.  
  
"I know what you did,” she says, weight of her soft thighs straddling him.  
  
“To your dad,” he says, guilt heavy, crushing against his soul.  
  
“And to Dean,” she nods.  
  
  
  
\\\   
  
_Dean is possessed by the thing that killed his mother, John’s wife. The evil, yellow-eyed demon John’s been chasing ever since it turned her to smoke and ash on the ceiling of the nursery when Dean was four.  
  
The Colt is in John’s hand; hammer cocked and pommel cold against his sweating palm. Dean is lying on the floor, body bent at the wrong angles, sack of bones inside skin three shades too pale, crimson stains inked at the edges of his bloodless lips, sunburst of red as he tries to speak.  _Do it._    
  
His son’s already dead. Already dead and gone except this final plea.  
  
Pull of the trigger, flash of thunder, and the lightning comes next; flashbulb pop that illuminates the inside of Dean's skull like the sun and then eclipsed, world left in nothing but shadow. He looks away from the ragged hole in his son's forehead--third eye set between the two that will never glow amber again--feels his stomach clench and rise fast and hard as the tears.  
  
Sam’s eyes are empty and black as the wound, staring at him wide and round, his remaining son’s face shattered open and soft underneath like John hasn’t ever seen._  
  
\\\   
  
  
“You and my dad weren’t blood, but you were family.”  
  
John nods weakly.  
  
“My mom’s gone now, too,” she says, kissing him again. “We're family, John. The only family we've got left.”  
  
He'd buried Sam’s pale, lifeless body last November in an unmarked grave beneath the fronds of a weeping willow while the sky had poured down buckets of rain. It was the first time John had seen him since they'd buried Dean.  
  
He doesn’t have anything left anymore, empty hole inside him, never enough killing, never enough dead monsters to fill it.  
  
For a little while, he lets her help him forget.  
  
  
*  
  
  
“You owe me,” she whispers. Flash of the moon trapped in the silver blade, cresting the point like a star before it’s extinguished by a fan of crimson. A spray of warm droplets spatters her face and she leaves it there, mouth dripping violent red as she carves him like a turkey, pink muscle peeling away with skin and fat, organs seeping out slow like worms from upturned earth.   
  
She smiles, and he can see the blood fill the space between her teeth, eyes dark and flat as faceless coins.   
  
He wakes with a start, her hair a tangled spill across his bare chest.   
  
The air reeks of bourbon, cheap, pungent scent lingering on the stale air of the motel room.   
  
If she wanted to kill him, she would’ve tried by now.   
  
He wonders why she did this instead.  
  
  
*   
  
  
Trust is uneasy between them. They circle each other like restless animals, dogs with wary eyes and old scars. It’s an invisible dance, made of words and glances and the careful ways they don’t touch unless they’re in bed together. There’s music in the empty sound of wind that rushes outside the truck, in the hum of the engine that fills in the words they don’t speak.  
  
Dust clouds the air as he stops the truck with a crunch of sand and stone. The night air is hot enough to bake them both, sweat streaming in rivers under the cold light of the moon, and she gathers wood for a fire anyway. Her profile is jagged red and gold, line like a knife's edge, the rest of her lost to shadow.  
  
The summer night is pregnant with heat along the bayou, filled with slow rolling fog that creeps in like ghosts to swallow the canopy of lush trees, Spanish moss drifting from them like tinsel. Patches of scattered fog drift by, slow, lazy stretch on the humid air, sound of distant drum beats carried with them, the muttering of ancient words.  
  
A man could get lost here, in this wild, strange country, lose himself and never find his way back out.  
  
His mind drifts lazily, muscles slumping, relaxing into sleep against the bald knees of a cypress tree, beer bottle slipping from his hand.  
  
  
*  
  
  
When he wakes, it’s to her face above him, etched in moonlight and shadow, cheekbones sharp and gaunt. He can see the sway of Spanish moss above him, eerie and beautiful in the breeze. Hands bound behind him, feet bound together, helpless among the long, tall grass and marshy ground. The knife glitters cold in her hand, refracted moonlight etched with the initials of her father.  
  
He understands it all now, the nights spent in motel rooms, bodies moving together to fend off loneliness, lulling him into a false sense of trust.  
  
“Why now?” he asks, tongue thick and slow.  
  
“I found Sam,” she tells him. “Made him tell me the ritual that would have brought Dean back. Takes a place like this, where the veil is thin between earth and the other realms. I had to bring you here to do it.”   
  
  
\\\  
  
_"You know the way to get him back." Sam is even paler than John remembers him. Bruises fading yellow and green across one cheek, split lip welling blood almost as dark as the circles cutting grooves under his eyes._  
  
_"There's no way to get him back right." John can see the way the words fall, each one shivering against Sam's skin as it strikes._  
  
_"I can't do it alone." Sam's hands clench into fisted knots, and John can see the muscles in his wrist flex, the deep, twisted line of a purple scar winding its way through the fragile veins._  
  
_"What's dead should stay dead." John's words stir the room with a whisper of breath like rustling leaves, finality in the sound._  
  
\\\  
  
  
Sound of drums in the distance, and the air is a warm caress against him, painting the world in surreal shades. “You killed Sam.”  
  
“I didn’t want to.” Her face is filled with regret so deep John almost believes her. “But he wouldn’t have let me do this.”  
  
“What you bring back… it won’t be your father.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter. It’s a fair trade. Your life for his,” she whispers, settling the blade against his skin.  
  
“You owe me.”

 

 


End file.
